Just praise is only a debt, but flattery is a present.
Look closely at those who patronize you. Half are unfeeling, half untaught.
Many lick before they bite.
None are more taken in by flattery than the proud, who wish to be the first and are not.
Nothing flatters a man as much as the happiness of his wife; he is always proud of himself as the source of it.
Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers.
The coin that is most current among mankind is flattery: the only benefit of which is that by hearing what we are not, we may be instructed on what to become.
The more we love our friends, the less we flatter them; it is by excusing nothing that pure love shows itself.
The reason that adulation is not displeasing is that, though untrue, it shows one to be of consequence enough, in one way or other, to induce people to lie.
To make a man perfectly happy tell him he works too hard, that he spends too much money, that he is ''misunderstood'' or that he is ''different''; none of this is necessarily complimentary, but it will flatter him infinitely more that merely telling him that he is brilliant, or noble, or wise, or good.
We swallow with one gulp the lie that flatters us, and drink drop by drop the truth which is bitter to us.
What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattering.
Women who are either indisputably beautiful, or indisputably ugly, are best flattered upon the score of their understandings; but those who are in a state of mediocrity are best flattered upon their beauty, or at least their graces: for every woman who is not absolutely ugly, thinks herself handsome.
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